


Let Love Clasp Grief Lest Both Be Drowned

by Prevalent_Masters



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nico di Angelo's Guide to Europe, Resurrection, Slow Build, so if you're worried about the major character death thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 21:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1793431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prevalent_Masters/pseuds/Prevalent_Masters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He leaves because he doesn't have a choice.  After that, he just keeps on leaving.  Old habits die hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Love Clasp Grief Lest Both Be Drowned

**Author's Note:**

> Idk man I just really want Percy and Annabeth to be happy but I also want Nico to be happy do you guys see the issue here.  
> (The happiness is not direct in this fic. But we'll get there.)  
> Shout out to Tennyson for the title.

**I**

He leaves, of course he does. His oath isn’t the oath of the prophecy; no, that was left to Leo who drifts out to sea on a flimsy wooden raft, bloody and broken, to the symphony of Piper’s hysterical sobs. The prophecy wasn't for him, but he still has to go, bound by some obscene sense of duty.  He has no place here—no place anywhere, not really, burden that he is on his so-called friends.

They tell him he saved the camps, appearing on Half-Blood Hill with the Athena Parthenos, uniting the camps, then taking an arrow meant for Reyna and still fighting, still calling the dead up out of the earth until there was nothing left in him.  He doesn’t remember passing out; one minute he’s there, surrounded by armies of the dead, the next somewhere entirely different, sick and disoriented, pain wracking every part of his body and the antique taste of his mother’s marinara sauce on his tongue.

 It all comes to nothing, anyway. Reyna dies, Octavian’s fault. Frank, too, leaving Nico’s sister a blank-eyed trembling mess, like she’ll never be happy again. Somehow, it comes down to being his fault. If only he’d got there sooner, if only he’d blocked one more arrow, if only, if only.  And here he is, stubbornly, frustratingly alive and of course he has to leave.

It’s not till he’s lucid and eating solid food again that they tell him.  By “they”, he means Jason, pale and haggard but uninjured.  He answers the question Nico’s too afraid to ask, about the only person he still hasn’t heard news of.

“Percy’s gone,” Jason says, unable to meet his eyes and _gods_ he would give anything to still be insensible.  Or dead.

The news of Percy decides it for him. He has to leave now. He’ll never be able to stay here again, not in a place so full of stubborn memories.

So he goes, even though he can barely stand, and the arrow wound in his shoulder, though healed over, still aches unpleasantly every time he moves.  Predictably, Jason tries to stop him, intercepting him at the edge of the woods where the best shadows are, blocking his direct escape.

“Where are you going?”

Nico smiles, the type of smile that tends to make people he directs it towards back away slowly.  He doesn’t answer Jason’s question because Jason already knows. Jason looks uncertain, bites his lip but doesn’t back away.  Instead he moves closer and engulfs Nico in an entirely unexpected and unwelcome hug.

Jason doesn’t give him any bullshit about him having a place there, or friends.  What he does say—or growls, rather, in direct contradiction to the gentleness of his arms—is “keep in touch or I’ll hunt you down and kill you myself.”

Then he lets go.

 

**II**

He likes cold places.  Cold and cloudy.  The first place he stays for any length of time is Ushuaia, where it’s winter and everything’s frozen solid.  He likes the penguins and the storms blowing in from three oceans at once. He stays there until he’s fully healed, a month maybe, not too long but it seems like forever.  He feels like he’s being chased, but there’s no one following him.

He jumps the Atlantic and the cities of Northern Europe are great places to be, even in summer—the moody clouds of Edinburgh, the persistent chill of Vaasa, even in August, Copenhagen as autumn sets in. He loves Paris, and finally figures out why the first time he goes down into the Catacombs—the entire city is covered in a shroud, an air of death that shelters and protects him. He blends in here better than anywhere else and stays through November, watches the city bleed from fall to winter while helping out in the back room of a bakery.  If only they could see the son of Hades now, rolling out croissant dough and smiling at old ladies with dogs. 

Paris is as far south he’ll ever go, even though he aches for Italy, for Venice.  He can’t, though, nothing around the Mediterranean, no Italy or Spain or Turkey or, Gods forbid, Greece.  Nowhere to remind him of anything that might break through the carefully built-up façade of “functional” that gets him through each day.

He doesn’t go to the Underworld. Usually, that’s the first place he would run but he doesn’t want to see his father.  He craves a complete divorce from that world; pretending, if only for a bit, to be a normal teenager who just happens to be on an extended backpacking trip through Europe.  He manages to fool even himself, sometimes.  The faces of all those he left behind fade into the indistinct part of his brain, bleeding and yellowing at the edges.  If he fools himself enough, his sister becomes just a normal teenager in a happy relationship with a boyfriend who is still alive. Leo might be nothing but an apprentice mechanic.  Percy Jackson might be alive and horsing around in some classroom in the Upper East Side.

He dreams about Percy almost every night. None of the dreams ever tell him anything; they’re always confused and muddled, indistinct, like fever dreams. He sees him in the Underworld, a shade, wandering lost through the Fields of Asphodel, standing just on the other side of the Styx watching Charon's boat pass by him, falling into Tartarus again and again and again. Nico sometimes wonders if he should go down there and seek out his ghost, talk to him one last time. Admit it to him. He knows he won’t.  He's too much a coward.

He leaves Paris in early December for Siberia because winter in Siberia?  Why not? It’s the emptiest place he’s ever been, bleak and indistinct under sheets of snow and ice, ragged skeletons of trees stretching for miles over flat tundra broken by rugged mountain chains, herds of caribou traversing from one river to another. In the wilderness, he feels free, finally, because he is nothing.  Just a mortal, lost and insignificant in the massive tract of land. Actions of his past and actions of his future fade into obscurity and all that matters is the blizzard today, the way his breath clouds in the air in front of him, the lonely curl of smoke from some enterprising miner’s cabin, the grove of trees or old barn he shelters in for the night.

 The only drawbacks to Siberia are the cities, grey and industrial, sprawling.  He tries to avoid them at first, but even a demigod can’t expect to survive a winter in the wilds of Siberia so he’s eventually forced to retreat to population centers for shelter and food.  If the wilderness makes him free, the cities only make him feel trapped, uncomfortable, like he’s being watched and shadowed around every corner.

Monsters have been oddly absent—he is in Europe, which means there are monsters, relics from when Olympus was centered in London, but most have moved on.  He’s had a few run-ins, but after facing down Gaea’s army, being chased through the alleys of Amsterdam by seven drakons doesn’t seem too bad.  Of course, this is what he’s been thinking and it’s only a matter of time before he’s proven wrong.

He’s in Irkutsk when it happens, and it seems to fit—Irkutsk is honestly one of the most depressing places he’s ever been, and he’s spent extensive amounts of time in the Underworld.  Industrial wasteland for miles and miles, and _cold_. It might be nice in the summer, but in the winter it’s one color: grey.  A lot of people live there, though, for some reason, and where there are people, there are monsters. 

Percy supposedly killed the Nemean Lion back on the quest that also killed Bianca, but the turnover rate in Tartarus has been quicker than usual since Gaea decided to meddle with the whole “death” thing, so it’s not surprising it’s back and hungry for some fresh demigod. Why it’s in Irkutsk, he has no idea.  Even monsters ought to have standards.

 He remembers the “go for the mouth” trick and kills it no problem, with a bit of help from the dead, but he’s out of practice and careless.  The lion drags four long claw marks across his shoulder—the same one that blocked the arrow—before it collapses and melts into the tan coat.  That’ll come in handy.

 The commotion from the fight draws some other monsters. Just drakons, but his shoulder throbs and he can’t lift his sword—it’s time to leave Siberia.

He’s the slightest bit panicked and a lot tired, so the shadow travel is messy.  He wants to go back to Edinburgh, maybe, where there’s a place he can stay and a middle-aged son of Ganymede who owns a pub with a plentiful supply of nectar in the back room.

That doesn’t work out for him.

He ends up stumbling out of a narrow alley, _sans_ lion pelt, into a moving _wall_ of people, and he’s swept along, praying that the Mist disguises the fact that his entire arm is wet with blood.  All the signs around him are written in characters. Unfortunately, Nico isn’t fluent in reading Asian languages, he’s barely fluent in reading English, so the signs don’t help him much.

Eventually there’s a sign in English, which he has to stand in front of for a good couple minutes to work out with his dyslexia. _Tokyo Metro_.  Tokyo.

He should be worried but he’s tired and his arm hurts and he’s got that dizzy, light-headed feeling that comes with poison. He needs somewhere to stay, somewhere to sleep, some water. 

A handy, newly developed power is the ability to tell where people have died recently.  It’s an aura, similar to the way the Underworld feels, that pulls him towards them. The closest two in Tokyo are hospitals and the next is a dingy public park with a rusty swing set and overflowing dumpsters.  The fourth, thankfully, is an apartment.  He shadow travels in, slightly more accurately this time, landing in the bathroom nearly on top of the toilet.  The apartment is void of any dead bodies and he crash lands on the sofa, smearing blood on the cushions. He can’t bring himself to care.

 He digs through his pack until he finds a Ziploc bag half-full of crushed ambrosia and pours the crumbs into his mouth. He doesn’t even bother cleaning up the blood or changing his clothes before he falls dead asleep.

 

  **III**

Predictably, he dreams of Percy. It starts indistinct, like all the other dreams.  Blurry images of his spirit in the Underworld, confused snapshots of his eyes and hands, the way he looked at Nico as he and Annabeth fell away into Tartarus.

 Then the dream changes.  The image shimmers into something clear and defined—Percy, or Percy’s shade, stands on the edge of the Styx, as Nico has seen him dozens of times before, staring across the water to the far bank. He wonders vaguely how Percy’s gotten away with not going through the death lines—it’s not like he has anything to worry about, he’ll go straight to Elysium as long as Minos isn’t on the judgment board.  But here he is, immortal soul still tethered to the mortal world, refusing to go through.

The image shifts and he’s standing next to Annabeth. Annabeth?  He’s never dreamed of her before.  Is this something that is really happening, the way his dreams used to be, before the war, before he started running?  Is this a premonition?

Annabeth is dirty, with a long bloody scratch down her cheek.  She looks livid, jaw set and twitching, eyebrows drawn low over her eyes.  It takes Nico a minute, but he eventually realizes where she’s standing—his father’s throne room, talking to him. Persephone lounges her throne next to him, looking bored.

“Give him back,” Annabeth is saying. “You don’t want him, you hate him. Give him back to me.”

His father chuckles smoothly, the sound sending a chill through Nico’s bones.  “You suggest the impossible, ignorant girl…”

“Orpheus did it,” Annabeth retorts, and then, to Nico’s abject horror, begins reciting the myth to Hades. It’s one of his father’s more embarrassing moments, and he knows how he hates to be reminded of it, no matter he claimed the contested soul in the end.

But rather than pulverizing her on the spot, Hades smirks.  “You think you are greater than Orpheus?”

Annabeth raises her chin and glares at him. “Yes.”  _Hubris_.

Hades laughs again.  “Fine.  If you succeed, you can keep his miserable little soul.  If you don’t, I take yours too.  Good luck, etc, etc.  Now leave.”

Annabeth turns on her heel and walks out of the throne room and the dream changes again.  He’s on a narrow, crumbling staircase cut into rock, high above the River Styx. It’s the path back to the Orpheus' Door in Central Park.  Next to him, Annabeth struggles upwards, determination written on her features.  He looks behind.

Percy’s soul becomes more solid with every step he takes, solidifying and swirling back into his mortal body as he pulls himself up the path, eyes trained on Annabeth’s back.  He’s struggling, Nico can see.  As his body becomes more solid, so too does the blood staining his clothes, the massive wound marring his torso.  Nico never saw him after the battle.  He never saw the wound.  He wants to be sick.

Percy must know that the only thing waiting for him in the mortal world is more pain—his soul might be restored, but his body must heal itself.  And yet he follows Annabeth, unquestioning.  Unthinkable to stay behind and accept death for what it is in the life of a half-blood: respite, at long last, peace.  Not if Annabeth isn’t next to him.

Turning back to Annabeth, he sees doubt in her eyes. They are so close, he can see the light of the entrance ahead of them.  But this is Orpheus’ curse: doubt, distrust, distraction in the final moments.

If she turns back now, they’ll both be gone forever.

He knows this is just a dream, in a loose way he remembers the wound on his shoulder, the poison, the tiny bedsit in Tokyo where he’s sleeping right now.  He probably has a fever from the poison, or the ambrosia, these are all just the ruminations of his maddened mind.  But he’s the only witness to this dramatic irony, and even if it’s just a dream—well, he can be useful in a dream, if not in reality.  He can help them cheat his father of what is rightfully his.

He steps in front of Annabeth and says her name.

She jumps and nearly falls off the path, righting herself and scrambling to grasp the cliff side.  “ _Nico?_ ”

“Don’t look.”

“What?”

“You want to look, I can tell. You can’t.”

“I _know_ I can’t."  Her voice is haughty even as her eyes flick from side to side, desperate to see behind her.  "Orpheus—“

He can’t take another lecture on mythology, not right now.  “Shut up, Annabeth. Look at me.  He’s right behind, I can see him.  He’s right behind you.”

He can tell she doesn’t trust him. “But—“

“He’s there, Annabeth.  I couldn’t lie to you about this.  You know I want him back too.”  She’s smart, she has to have figured things out at this point, at least in this dream world.

She has.  She nods and sets her eyes on his and keeps walking.  Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Percy, still following, staring at him too. 

They’re not far from the door at all, Annabeth almost made it on her own, just like Orpheus.  Too bad Orpheus didn’t have a handy, feverish, son of Hades to help him out.

He backs into the door and stands aside so Annabeth can pass.  She stops before she goes through and Nico feels like punching her.  “Are you sure--?”

“He’s here, he’s right behind you, now _go through_.”  He pushes her bodily through the doorway and she disappears into the sunlight. Behind her, Percy trips over some rocks and falls to his knees, clutching his middle and panting. His eyes bore into Nico’s, and if Nico can read lips right, he thinks Percy might mouth his name.

He holds out a hand to Percy. “Come on.  You’re so close.”

Percy reaches out to him and grasps his hand, sending electricity shooting up his arm, through his entire body. Solid and alive, his hand is warm. Nico drags him up and pushes him out of the doorway into Annabeth’s arms.  He wants to follow, he wants to be on the surface with them, not stuck in the Underworld as he always seems to be but before he can step up into the light the dream spirals away, the cliff disintegrating under his feet, sending him down towards the Fields of Punishment.  His father laughs, and it echoes in his ears.  A Fury—Alecto?—picks him up and drops him into fire where he burns and burns…

He wakes up, on the floor next to the couch in Tokyo, tangled in the blanket he pulled out of a cupboard and soaked with sweat. It’s nine AM, the bustle of a giant city surrounds him, he hears it through the walls. Clink of cups on saucers from next door, radio on across the hall, honking traffic and hum of pedestrians out the window.  He’s more exhausted than he was when he fell asleep, if that’s possible, and his shoulder _really hurts_.

He peels off his t-shirt, stuck to his skin and encrusted with blood, wincing.  He does his best to clean the wounds using the poorly-stocked bathroom cabinets and downs three painkillers along with the remainder of his ambrosia. Now, all he has left is an inch of nectar in an old water bottle and he wants to save that for a real emergency.

He’s shaky and sickened by the dream. This is the clearest he’s had in months; he can still feel Percy’s hand in his own.  He desperately wants to believe it was reality, but he pushes that desire down and buries it under sensibility.  It’s impossible, simply impossible.  There’s a reason Orpheus’ curse exists—you can’t just waltz down into the Underworld and upset the balance of mortality and immortality on a whim.  Death has permanence, it has to, and no matter how much you loved someone, sometimes they’re just gone.

He should know.

He forces himself to turn his mind off the thought and heads into the city for some food.

He ends up staying in Tokyo for a month, half of which he spends sick, with the claw marks bleeding constantly and sluggishly. He downs the nectar, eventually, and has to go on a citywide search for nectar or ambrosia.  He eventually finds the second buried in the back of a heavily disguised “herbal medicine” store.  They have no idea what they’re selling, but he buys their entire supply, ignoring the frankly horrifying price the clerk slaps on it. 

The days are quiet.  He stays in the dead guy’s apartment, poised to run at any moment in case family or prospective tenants (or monsters) show up, but none ever do. He sleeps a lot. He sees hints of monsters—it’s clear Tokyo’s full of them—but thankfully avoids any encounters, though he does have an army of dead dispatch a herd of giant fire breathing lizards intent on rampaging through Shinjuku.  Gradually, he loses any sliver of hope he held of Percy’s resurrection—if it had happened, _someone_ would have gotten in touch, someone would have found him.  Wouldn’t they?

He rests and prays to all the gods that the world will forget about him and let him be.

 

**IV**

It can’t last, of course.  Eventually something corners him in a dark metro station at three in the morning.  It has four heads and a very energetic tail to keep him busy.  And maybe the wound in his shoulder isn’t quite as healed as he thought, and maybe it’s sapped more strength than he thought it had, because he can’t fight it. He can defend himself, barely, but he can’t gather enough energy to summon any skeletons, or even to shadow travel. The monster’s just waiting, almost teasing him, tiring him out until it can make a killing blow.

Which it does, eventually, although the monster probably doesn’t expect it to be _quite_ that easy.

 It’s the tail, of course, an oft-forgotten part of the anatomy, that does the trick.  He’s a bit distracted by the four slavering heads full of teeth, and the tail comes out from behind and slams into him, into his shoulder, the same side with the still-unhealed claw marks, the same side that took the arrow meant for Reyna ten months ago.  He _hears_ it, an ugly pop, a sickening tear, a moment of unreality as he feels wetness course over his arm and chest, and then—

 Gods, he’s never felt pain like that before. Never.  His arm doesn’t feel quite connected anymore, and the pain should be localized in the area of the injury, but it isn’t, it’s everywhere, coursing through his veins, paralyzing him.  Through hazy vision, he sees the monster stalking towards him for the final blow and he can’t bring himself to care much.  There are spikes on the tail he hadn’t seen before, and monsters really need to stop with the whole poison thing.

 He always thought he would go out fighting, go out brave.  But this—there’s nothing to do but close his eyes and wait for the pain to go away.

But the pain doesn’t go away, and the final blow doesn’t come, and what’s the damn thing _doing_? Getting a snack and sitting back to watch the show as a son of Hades bleeds out in a lonely corner of the Tokyo Metro? He wishes he could open his eyes to see, because there are noises—scuffling, grunts, a sharp cry, a growl—but his eyelids are so heavy.  Was his body always made out of solid lead? 

There’s an explosion, silent, but he feels it, the sharp displacement of air, the rubble against his skin. Silence.  Then footsteps—far away, echoing, like in a dream. Someone touching him, warmth against his face—when did he get so cold?  It’s freezing down here.

“Oh gods, _Nico_ —“

He knows that voice.

Hands on him, touching him, his arm— _no, not there, please no no no_

“It’s okay, Nico, we’ve got you, just hang on—“

That voice

voice touching arm gone something missing hurt hurt everything wet and everything cold cold where now shoulder voice

 voice

**V**

The darkness is colored by red, slashes through his mind whenever his body is moved.  He thinks he might be dead, but this isn’t the Underworld, and it isn’t life either, so where is he?

 The taste of his mother’s marinara sauce floods his mouth and warms him, warms him too much, he’s hot, but the heat is better than the unbearable cold.

 Hands on him, holding him down. Someone grasping his arm and shoulder tightly— _no, no, don’t touch me it hurts it hurts you’re making it hurt_.

 “Just hold on Nico, this’ll hurt but it’ll be better after.  Just hold on.”

 A wrenching pop and he’s screaming, he must be, he’s never felt pain like this before.

 “Shh, shh, see, it’s better now, it’s okay…”

 It’s not.

Ragged dreams, broiling images. Frank’s face shifts into Percy’s shifts into Reyna’s shifts into Leo’s sinking through dark water and fire both. Hazel in danger, running for her life, he has to help her but he’s held down by something, can’t get up. Hazel runs through woods and the shadows reach out to grasp at her, snagging at her ankles, tripping her, bearing her down to the ground.  _That’s you_ , his father’s voice tells him, _the shadow_.  Bianca comes to him, and she’s crying and holding him and he desperately wants to hug her back but he’s paralyzed, can’t move, can only lie passively as Bianca’s skin drips off her, leaving a skeleton who stands over him and stabs his own sword into his shoulder again, and again, and again. 

“…his fever…shouldn’t risk more ambrosia, we’ll make it worse…”

“But it’s not working…”

“…has to fight it on his own…more water?”

Something cool on his lips, liquid pouring into his mouth, fighting the heat.  He gulps at it, grasping weakly at the hand holding the glass to his lips. Chokes on it.

“Woah, slow, okay?  You awake?”

No, not really.

Bianca dies in front of him in every way he can imagine—she burns, an explosion engulfs her, she’s stabbed through, prickled by arrows, drowned.  He can’t move to save her, to help her.  Useless, just as he was the first time.  He tries to call out her name, tries to reach for her but the darkness swallows his voice and his arms weigh too much to lift.

“Useless,” Hades sneers, coming up behind him to grasp his shoulder, all the other Olympians gathered behind him. “All you ever do is run.” His father crushes his shoulder in his grasp and Nico screams and screams…

“…just a dream, Nico, just dreams! It’s okay…” Cool hands on his forehead, something numbing on his shoulder.  He falls into darkness too deep for dreams.

“Shouldn’t he be waking up?  Do you think we should try to get him back to camp or something?”

“He hit his head, too, I think he just needs to rest…too risky to transport him so far…”

He dreams of Percy, hovering over him, smiling. He dreams of the tiny bedsit in Tokyo, claustrophobic and closed.  He dreams of Annabeth, too, doing something to his shoulder that _hurts_.  He wonders if she hates him.  He would hate him in her position.  He wonders if she’s hurting him because she hates him.

But she also helps him.  She gives him the thing that tastes like marinara sauce, like sun warmed stones and the flowering orange trees by the lakes—nectar, his muddled brain finally supplies.  Nectar and ambrosia.

In his deepest dreams, he’s a child again, sitting in the Piazza with his mother and Bianca, licking at gelato melting out of his cone.  Mama throws crumbs to the pigeons bobbing and pecking around them, a fruit vendor yells about melons on the other end of the square, the Campanile’s bells chime.  He’s walking hand in hand with Bianca along the Canalasso while Bianca buys bread and onions and tomatoes for Mama to make dinner. He’s standing in the cold water of Lago d’Iseo, where they went on holiday once, watching minnows dance between his toes.

These dreams aren’t dreams as he usually experiences them.  They’re images that weep into his mind and stay for a few moments, pictures of a childhood he thought he’d forgotten.  They leave him with something warm and hopeful, resting in his chest, covering and chasing the ache away.

**VI**

His head hurts.  This is the first thing he notices.  His shoulder aches.  He has to take a full inventory of everything: both legs, yes, he can move them, torso, everything in tact, nothing too painful, right arm present, fingers twitch, left arm— _ow_ , immobilized and trying to move it was not a good idea, neck stiff and sore, headache. His body feels loose and weak, he can tell he’s had a fever.  He doesn’t think he’s dreaming anymore, though.  Everything feels solid around him, mattress under him, pillow, rough sheets. He hears voices, indistinct.  His mind shoots up an alarm at this—who is it?  Who found him?  Is he with friends, or enemies?  Enemies, most likely, considering his track record with friends. 

“…Chiron said get him back to camp as soon as he’s well enough to move.  It’d be nice if we could shadow travel, but he probably won’t be up for that, we might have to fly…”

“…can’t do that, we can get Jason out here again with the Argo II…”

“I doubt he wants to keep ferrying us around the world. You haven’t done anything to piss of Zeus for awhile, you’ve been stuck in the Underworld.  We should be fine.”

One of those voices is improbable, the other is impossible.  He must still be dreaming.

“…go pick up some dinner.  Go to that place down the street, the one with the good soba…

He wrenches his eyes open.  He’s still dreaming, because Percy Jackson stands in the doorway to the kitchen, staring at him. 

“Nico!”  He strides over and reaches towards him, but Nico wrenches himself sideways, pain shooting through his entire body, away from Percy’s hand. “You’re dead.” His voice comes out a croak, disused and raw.

Percy’s brow furrows in confusion. “I was.  I’m back now.  You helped, remember?”

“N-no, I—that was a dream.  I was sick.”

Percy grins at him, disarming and cheerful, out of place. And damn him if it doesn’t send Nico’s heart rate through the roof.  “No, you came for us.  It was real. I remember, you helped me up and pushed me through the door.  Annabeth would’ve failed without you.”

Nico just shakes his head, back pressed against the wall on the very edge of the bed, staring at Percy.  He’d flopped into a very uncomfortable position, but can’t gather the strength to rearrange himself.  His shoulder throbs.  He shouldn’t have tried to move at all.

Percy moves closer again, slower this time like he’s approaching a wild animal.  He looks the same, with a few subtle changes to hint at the improbability of his existence.  Paler than he used to be, skin devoid of the dark tan he always had.  Gaunter, skin stretched tight over his cheekbones, dry lips (yeah, he’s staring at Percy’s lips.  He likes Percy’s lips) and dark circles beneath his eyes. A slight limp as he holds his torso stiff, moving like it still pains him.  Gently, he reaches over and coaxes Nico from the edge of the bed, helping him lie back down in the center.  Then he sits on the edge, not touching Nico but close enough for him to feel his warmth. “Want some water? Nectar?  Anything?”

“I—no, I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” says a voice from the doorway, and he lifts his eyes to see Annabeth leaning on the wall.  “It’s been a week and a half since we found you in that subway tunnel.  It was bad.”

“We were thinking of risking the trip to take you back to Chiron,” Percy tells him, eyes cutting to his shoulder, which is heavily bandaged, his arm immobilized to his chest.  “Your shoulder was dislocated, one of the bones was broken, pushed through the skin.  You also have some nasty looking claw marks, but they looked older…?” He trails off, inviting Nico to finish the story but he’s too overwhelmed by information.  Still in Tokyo.  Alive, with Percy and Annabeth, who care enough to be here with him now.  He must be missing something, some part of the story that will explain all this.  He spares a moment for mortification when he realizes he doesn’t have a shirt on, and different pants than he had in the metro tunnel.  _Di immortales,_ Percy Jackson has probably seen him naked.

Speaking of Percy.  Alive. In front of him. He keeps blinking, expecting him to disappear, because he’s dead, he can’t possibly be here. Alive.

He coughs, throat tearing against itself. Annabeth hands Percy a glass of water, which Percy holds to his lips.  Percy, who is alive, is touching him.  Gods, he might have thought he was over this… _thing_ he felt for Percy, but clearly he isn’t. 

And, of course, the first conscious contact he has with Percy is when Percy is literally holding his head up for him because he’s too weak to drink, something both he and Annabeth have presumably been doing all week. He was doing fine by himself, but the moment someone else enters the picture he goes back to being the useless, weak burden he always is.

Through the torrents of thoughts he can only voice the most basic question:  “How did you find me?”

Percy’s brow furrows.  “I had a dream.  You were dying, I could feel it, and I could see you in that station where you got cornered. You were alone. We had a hard time tracking you down but I kept dreaming about you and Annabeth eventually figured out which metro system it was based on my descriptions.”

“And you just…came?”  He can’t honestly believe that anyone, especially Percy and Annabeth would go out of their way, come all the way from camp, just to find him based on a dream that could have been entirely false.  Especially so soon after Percy’s supposed return, why would they throw themselves into the first danger they could find?

Both Percy and Annabeth seem confused by the question. “Of course,” Annabeth says, like he’s the idiot here.  Percy moves to gently touch his arm.  “We’ve been looking for you.  Everyone has, especially since you showed up to help Annabeth and I.  But nobody’s been able to track you down.”

 _That’s because I didn’t want to be found,_ he wants to tell them, but he’s tired again, his eyelids drooping.  Percy’s eyes crinkle in concern and he sets a hand on Nico’s forehead.  “Still got a fever,” he murmurs.

“Sleep, Nico,” Annabeth urges. “Everything’ll be fine now, you can rest.”

He can’t sit up by himself for three more days, can’t even think about getting up for days after that.  He needs help getting to the bathroom, which is just sad considering it’s literally two steps away from the bed.  He keeps waiting for Percy and Annabeth to leave; he’s told them to more than once, but they don’t.  They’re endlessly patient and he doesn’t understand why.

One day when Percy’s out buying food Annabeth comes to sit next to him on the bed.  He’s sitting up, looking at pictures in a Japanese fashion magazine out of sheer boredom and she just comes and sits right next to him, cracking open a truly massive history book and starting to read.  He’s uncomfortable at first, but she seems so natural he eventually relaxes, falling into a doze.  Which is why her next words nearly make him jump out of his skin and fervently wish he were strong enough to shadow travel the hell away.

“I know how you feel about Percy,” she says it casually, while turning a page in her textbook.

“What?” he yelps.  “How?”

She shrugs.  “Jason’s really bad at keeping secrets.”

Nico is going to kill Jason, murder him violently, and the rage in his expression must show because Annabeth quickly holds up a pacifying hand.  “No, no, he didn’t _tell_.  Just—when I brought Percy back to camp and everyone was freaking out, the first thing he did was say ‘Nico’ll be so happy.’ And I was thinking about that, and wondering why you were the first connection he made, and I just realized that it’s been so obvious, I should have realized it years ago…”

“I—no!  I don’t—”

She meets his eyes, the steely grey that always made him the slightest bit uncomfortable.  “It’s okay, Nico.”

He snorts, turning away from her. “It’s not.”

She takes his hand, tightening her grip when he moves to pull away.  “It _is_.  Look, everyone loves Percy.  You a little differently than others, but I’m over getting jealous about it.  And you don’t need to be so worried about it. He cares about you a lot. You should have seen him, when he started dreaming about you.  Still half dead and all he could talk about was how we needed to start looking for you, how we needed to find you.”

“I’ve tried getting over it,” he admits, looking anywhere but directly at her.  “I can’t. I fucking can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she says, and tightens her grip. “I care about you too.”

Another week passes and he’s better. No more fever, regaining most of his strength.  His shoulder is still heavily bandaged but his arm is a little mobile now, at least. He doesn’t need much help anymore, he’s even left the apartment a few times.

One night, late, when even the city streets outside the apartment window are quiet, he leaves his bed to get a glass of water. As he leaves the kitchen, his eyes land on Annabeth and Percy, huddled on the sofa.  He’s tried to get them to take the bed since he was able to actually get out of it, but they refuse every time.  

The couch is far too small for both of them, and, as a result, Percy is practically on top of Annabeth. He squints through the dark and can feel himself blush.  Percy’s shirt is rucked up, exposing the long line of his torso.  But there’s something off.  Nico squints and moves a little closer.

The scar is ugly and half-healed, pink and shiny, stretching from the lower edge of Percy’s stomach, near his hip bone, up across his ribcage.  It splits him neatly in two, this remainder of the mortal wound he sustained. Nico feels sick. This is his fault. The wound, the whole battle in the first place, made ten times worse and more deadly because he and Reyna didn’t get there faster, because Nico was too _weak_ to get them there faster.  Then the fact that Percy had to live through the pain of the wound a second time, all because Nico showed up and dragged him from peaceful death into painful life. Maybe that had been mostly Annabeth, but it was Nico who ultimately pushed him back into the light.

He backs away slowly, back into the bedroom, away from the hideous reminder etched across Percy’s body.  Sitting on the edge of the bed, he runs his hand through his hair again and again, quietly panicking.

Here’s the thing: everything he touches, everything that comes in contact with Nico di Angelo, is inevitably destroyed. Some things quicker than others, in many different ways.  But he always manages to do it.  He is, after all, the son of the Death God.  The Ghost King. He’s meant for dark places and things already destroyed, meant for the shadows and the peripheries, the Underworld, not the mortal world or the world of the gods.  Hazel’s different, he doesn’t know why.  Maybe it’s her Roman ancestry, or her affinity with jewels and gold, beautiful things, things people desire.  Hazel isn’t the one coaxing armies of skeletons out of the ground or breaking open the earth’s crust in anger or destroying everything that comes near. That’s him.

He has to leave.  He can’t be near Percy and Annabeth, bringing them danger, burdening them with his weakness and destruction.  Three half-bloods in one tiny apartment, one of whom reeks of the Underworld? Who knows how many monsters he’s attracted, who knows how many they had to fight off while he was sleeping and too weak to move?

He has to leave.

He grabs his bag from where it’s been abandoned under the bed for the last month, stuffs in a few rolls of bandages and antiseptic cream lying on the bedside table, a baggie of ambrosia, a granola bar. Buckles his sword, which he can still barely lift with his bad arm, back onto his belt. 

When he walks back out into the living room, Percy and Annabeth’s faces are illuminated slightly by the beam of the streetlight through the window.  He sees their chests rising and falling with each breath.  He steps closer, knowing he should leave, but unable to help himself. A think strand of hair has fallen into Annabeth’s face, fluttering with every exhale.  Gently, he brushes it back.

“Sorry,” he whispers.  “Thank you.”  He backs away to the shadows gathered in the corners.

Annabeth’s eyes twitch, then flutter open. She stares at him for a moment before realization dawns in her eyes.  “Nico?”

“Sorry,” he repeats.  “I’m sorry.”

“Nico!”

He’s gone.

 

**VII**

He ends up back in Paris.  He’s still too weak and the shadow travel takes everything he has, but the fever doesn’t come back and no monsters come knocking, thanks to the catacombs. He lays low, finds a tiny apartment in one of the working class immigrant districts at the base of Montmartre, and waits.  He knows he should keep moving, but he’s so tired of running from nothing.  He just wants to rest.

 A few weeks later, he makes the stupendously stupid decision to Iris Message Hazel.  It’s about two AM, Paris time, and he doesn’t remember the last time he slept well. He misses being with other people, the sudden disturbance to his forced isolation conditioned him far too quickly to expect other people around: Annabeth in the kitchen or reading on the bed next to him, Percy sprawled on the couch.  He feels the kind of hopelessness that eats you up, that dumps you down a well with no bottom, so you just fall forever.  He needs a familiar face, someone who will remind him that, somewhere, there are people like him with a life outside of the Underworld, surrounded by friends, living with purpose.

It’s been a year since Frank’s death, a year since everything ended, and Hazel still looks like hell, but maybe like she’s going to be okay eventually.  She yells at him, predictably, then cries, then yells some more.

“You idiot!  You didn’t keep in touch, you could have been dead, for all we knew!”

“You knew I wasn’t dead.”

“That doesn’t make it better!”

After the yelling, after the tears, he doesn’t want to disconnect, just wants to sit staring at her face. He feels like when he disconnects he’ll be even more alone than he was before.  _You don’t have to be alone_ , a voice in the back of his head reminds him helpfully, _you’re bringing this on yourself._

 _Shut up_ , he tells it.

Right before they disconnect, he asks Hazel something that he’s been wondering for awhile.  “Why didn’t you go after Frank?” he asks Hazel, watching the tears gather in the edge of her eyes at the mere mention of his name. “If Annabeth did it, why didn’t you?”

She shakes her head.  “Frank didn’t want to come back,” she says softly. “I talked to him, you know. He was tired, glad he didn’t have to struggle or worry anymore.  He’s waiting for me.  In Elysium.”

He hates this, hates that Hazel is only fifteen and talking about her boyfriend waiting for her in the afterlife. Why couldn’t it just be normal for her? For any of them?

She’s still talking.  “Besides, it wouldn’t be right if everyone could waltz down into Hades and bring back everyone they loved.  There has to be some sense of mortality, you know. I don’t know how Annabeth managed it, but that’s not supposed to happen.  I’m glad it did, but I still can’t really be around Percy much, it just seems too wrong. I’ll get used to it, but…you know.”

He does.  He thinks Percy’s return to the living might have been half of the reason for his illness.  The wake of the dream—the dream which he now knows was reality—left him unsettled and sickened, the equilibrium of life and death heaving and upset.

He signs off with Hazel, feeling both lonelier and comforted, and sleeps a full night undisturbed for the first time since this whole mess started.

 

**VII**

Jason is the one who finds him. Nico gets in late a few nights after his IM to Hazel to find him sitting on the couch, beer in hand like he owns the place. No announcement, no warning. Just—there he is. He doesn’t acknowledge Nico for a good thirty seconds, eyes on an iPhone he’s scrolling through (what the hell is he doing with an iPhone?  Is he trying to get them killed?).  When he switches it off and looks up his eyes are calm and glassy, holding in barely concealed rage.

“Nico!” He says, like this is some chance encounter, like he’s not sitting on his couch at eleven thirty at night. “Good to see you!”

He doesn’t answer him, instead bypassing him and going straight to the kitchen.  He’s a fan of ignoring things until they go away, though that strategy might not work as well with the livid son of Jupiter in the next room as it did with a few persistent ghosts who wouldn’t leave him alone last time he was in Paris. Sure enough, Jason trails him into the kitchen and grabs another beer out of the fridge—the asshole, that’s hard for Nico to get.  “How’s the shoulder?” he asks, nodding towards the offending bit of Nico’s anatomy, still swaddled in bulky bandages beneath his shirt.

 “Fine,” he replies shortly, biting into a stale croissant with unnecessary violence.

“Glad you survived.  Sounds like you weren’t doing so hot with that.”

“I was doing _fine_.”

Then Jason’s right in his face and he’s no longer barely concealing his rage, no, he’s letting it right out.

Nico can’t really blame him.

“They saved your life.  They stayed with you for almost a month nursing your sick ass back to health and what do you do to thank them?  You run away at the first opportunity.  They both freaked out, of course.  It took us ages to track you down.  We only found you cause you IM’d Hazel, thank the Gods.”

He knew that was a bad idea.  “Maybe I didn’t want to be tracked down!”

“Yeah?  Well that’s too bad.  You’re done running Nico, and as soon as you get your head out of your ass and recognize that there are a few people in this world who care about you too life’s gonna get a lot easier for you.  I told you I’d come after you if you didn’t keep in contact, and here we are.  I might still kill you.”

“Get out of my face,” Nico hisses, trying to sound as threatening and ghost-king like as he possibly can. It doesn’t work, his intimidation tactics never do on Jason, but he still backs down, leans against the counter, sets down the unopened second beer, rubs at his eyes tiredly.

“You need to go back to them.”

‘What?”

“Seriously, Nico.  They want to see you.  While you’re at it, you might want to drop in on your sister, who you’ve apparently completely forgotten about.  That was the first time you’d gotten in touch with her?  Really, Nico?  I expected you to ice the rest of us out, but I honestly didn’t think you’d do that to Hazel.”

“I haven’t—“

But he has.  First Frank, and then him, the older brother who was supposed to stick around and help out but who ran away instead because things got too hard. He’s an _asshole_.

Just because he recognizes this doesn’t mean he wants to see Percy and Annabeth, though.  Nope, no thanks, not after leaving the way he did.

“ _Nico_.” Jason’s tone makes it clear that he is perfectly willing to tie Nico up in direct sunlight, where he has no hope of shadow travelling away from his issues, until he does what Jason wants.

“Fine,” he says.  “Where are they?”

“They’ll be here tomorrow.  I already IM’d them.”

Well shit.

Nico usually likes a little more time to steel himself for what’s coming, or, more accurately, to figure out how to run away from what’s coming.  Jason knows this and—damn, Jason’s good.

“I can’t—“

“You can,” Jason interrupts smoothly. “And you will. Now,” he stretches his arms above his head and lets out a massive yawn.  “It’s been a long day, so I’ll be staying the night if you don’t mind. Goodnight, cousin mine.” He ruffles Nico’s hair as he walks past and Nico _hates_ him.

 

**VIII**

He meets them by the metro station near Notre Dame, because that’s where the train from the airport comes in and he doesn’t expect two people who have never been to Paris to navigate the maze of streets—or the metro route—from Notre Dame to Montmartre. 

Jason insists on coming with him. He knows it’s to stop him from skipping out, and he resents that but also begrudgingly accepts its necessity, based on his recent history. 

He nearly chickens out when he sees Percy and Annabeth loitering by the metro entrance.  They’re holding hands.  Annabeth points and gestures towards Notre Dame, eyes sparkling, and Nico can imagine the lecture Percy is getting on its architecture.  He stops in his tracks and only Jason’s tight grip on his arm and growled “I swear to the gods, di Angelo,” get him to take another step.

He’s never heard Jason swear so much as he has in the last twelve hours, not even during the Giant War.  Clearly, Nico just brings out the best in people.

The first thing Percy does is punch him. Which he totally deserves, but it _hurts_.  Before he can figure out how to react, Percy is hugging him and Nico is very confused.  Jason, after a very manly slap on the back, melts discreetly away, probably to spy on them from some café. 

Percy is still hugging him, and Nico feels the blush spread from his cheeks to the rest of his face and thank Zeus for that dark Italian coloring because this would be _very_ awkward without it.

It’s pretty awkward with it, too.

Percy finally steps back, and he still looks pissed but it’s nothing like the cool judgment in Annabeth’s gaze.

“Why did you leave?”

“I—I just—“

“After everything?  I told you I didn’t care!  Neither does Percy, for the love of Eros!” 

A shiver runs through Nico at the name. “It wasn’t because of that! I was putting you in danger! I didn’t want to hurt you!”

“So you decided disappearing was the thing to do? _Again_?” Percy’s eyes are full of hurt, not anger, he’s actually _hurt_ over Nico leaving.  Further evidence that Nico can’t do anything right, especially when it comes down to protecting the people he loves. 

“We came to find you,” Percy continues. “We knew it might be dangerous, and we still came.  We came to help!”

“It’s not _worth_ it!” This comes bursting out, like Percy’s some psychiatrist he’s paying to tell all his issues to.  “ _I’m_ not worth it, okay? Like, you coming to find me and getting killed in the process of hauling my useless ass around, _especially_ when you weren’t fully healed, Percy, that’s not worth it.

“I saw your scar by accident,” he continues, turning to Percy.  “I saw it and it’s horrible, I’m sorry.  And it’s partially my fault that it happened, that the entire battle happened the way it did. I don’t want you to _ever_ hurt like that again because of me! Either of you! Anyone!  That’s why I left.  If I’m not around, no one gets hurt because of me.”

They both look shocked by the outburst. He doesn’t get it. Don’t they remember the history? Chaos follows Nico like a shadow, why should he let it attach to the people around him, too?

Percy strides over to where he’s retreated and grabs his collar, pulling him in close.  “You idiot.  You’ve made mistakes, yeah, some really dumb ones.  So have I, okay? You’ve done great things too. And don’t you _dare_ blame that battle or what happened to me or what happened to anyone else on yourself.  _Nothing_ about that was your fault.”

“I—“

Annabeth comes up behind Percy and looks at him bleakly.  “When are you going to realize that people care, Nico?  When are you going to let someone else in?”

“I just don’t want people to get hurt,” he whispers.

Percy makes a frustrated sounds and lets go of Nico’s collar to gesture wildly.  “People got hurt because of the Titans and Gaea and the Giants and Octavian and monsters and natural fucking disasters!  Not because of you!”  I mean, Gods, Nico,” he rubs at his face, “ _You_ brought the Athena Parthenos back to camp.  Think about how things would’ve turned out without that.  You _pulled my soul out of the Underworld_.  Annabeth and I would’ve both died without you, remember that?”

“That was an accident, though, I told you I was dreaming—“

“Nico, just—“ Percy cuts himself off and pulls Nico in by the collar again.

And then Percy Jackson is kissing him.

And oh, no, this is so not okay.

He pushes Percy off him and reels away, gasping. “No, you can’t.”

Percy looks incredibly frustrated. “Why _not_ Nico?”

“Because—“ his lips burn, they tingle, all he wants is to pull Percy back towards him.  “Annabeth—and you—please.”

Percy turns back towards Annabeth, looking incredibly confused.  He’s such an idiot, he really is.  “I thought you said—“

“I did,” says Annabeth grimly, looking like she wants to murder them both.  She strides to Nico and takes his hand, looking him squarely in the eye.  “You have to stop this, Nico.  You’re not happy, you’re killing yourself doing this. I want you to be happy."

“Percy kissing me to fulfill some—fantasy—won’t make me happy!”  What is she thinking? What can she possibly think to accomplish, setting Percy on him without any feelings involved? She must still hate him.

Percy, if possible, looks more confused. He shifts and winces, hand reaching up instinctively to his torso.  “Fantasy?  What fantasy?”

Nico turns to Percy and decides the day has already gone to shit, so why not send it further?  “Percy.  I’m gay! I’ve had a crush on you since I was eleven. I thought I was over it, but guess what? I’m not!”

Percy continues to look befuddled. “I know.  That’s why I kissed you.”

Is he honestly this dense?  “You kissing me is not helpful.  That actually makes me feel worse.  Because you’re dating someone already.  Who’s standing right next to us.”

“Oh.”  Percy’s expression clears.  “That’s okay. I wanted to kiss you. And she wanted me to kiss you. I mean—I.  Look, I would like to kiss you, okay?  Because I care about you.” 

“Are you suggesting…” he glances over at Annabeth, who just smiles.

“You’re both crazy.”

“No,” Percy shrugs.  “We’re half-bloods.  I’ve just been resurrected.  You’re ninety-something years old.  Why is _this_ the crazy thing?”

He has to admit, all of the above are valid.

“Let us in, Nico,” Percy whispers, taking a step forward.  “Please, stop running and let us in.”

He’s tired.  He’s so tired of running, of betraying people, of trying and trying and always failing somehow.  He wants so badly to just—rest.

He lets out a tiny nod.

Percy wraps his arms around him again and this time Nico lets him, lets their lips touch and meld.  Maybe he’s still in a dream, maybe he’s still dying in a Tokyo metro station, or maybe he died in the Giant War and this is some weird thing in the Fields of Punishment tailored especially for him, but he hopes not. Gods, he hopes not.

A warm hand slides into his, the one not around Percy’s neck, and squeezes.  He opens his eyes and glances over.  Annabeth stands close, one hand in Nico’s, one in Percy’s.  Their eyes meet.  She smiles.

Maybe this is impossible and stupid. Maybe he’s making a terrible mistake. Maybe this will only lead to more pain and more death and more loneliness.

He hopes not.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have never been to any of the places described in this fic. All the descriptions and locations are based on extensive use of Wikipedia and Google Street View. Please forgive any glaring errors, this fic is unbeta'd and Wikipedia, though wonderful, can sometimes lead astray.


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